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| You may not have toxic colon. You may just have Trump or Brexit. |
In case you haven't figured it out, I am a liberal. I believe ALL people deserve decent food, housing, clothing, education and a society peaceful enough for everyone to work on reaching his or her heart's desire.
I decry anyone who, for greed or sociopathology, interferes with that by being needlessly vicious or by electing sociopaths. So yes, the bogus president of the United States and the reprehensible, if not quite as bogus, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom meet the criteria.
So what? So how is a relatively balanced person supposed to create art when sociopathic kleptocrats are in charge of the two largest English-speaking nations on earth? They're filling society and our hearts and minds and even souls with a layer of anti-humane memes a mile thick, backed up by the threat of force. Troops to corral refuges in Texas; the threat of soldiers on British streets to stop citizens killing each other over a box of aspirin post-Brexit.
Our every waking moment, for slightly more than 2.5 years, has been blanketed with not a tissue of lies, but a mile-thick blanket of egregious untruths, in both nations. Blotus lies, according to those who have surveyed it, an average of 100 times a day. ONE HUNDRED LIES A DAY FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. That is a level Nixon could only dream about, and he was a criminal from his wing-tips to his thinning hair.
May doesn't lie as much, I think. She doesn't need to. Like a parrot who has had a stroke, she repeatedly parrots her single meme about leave meaning leave. (Ah, yes, doctor, about that loss of cerebral function....) She is so totally incompetent that whatever she does or says is greeted with palpable disdain and disrespect by, I think, both Remainers and Leavers. The Leavers fear she will NOT ruin the nation as they desire so that they can feel better, tossers that they are, as the rest of us are forced to live like rats. Remainers are worried that she will ruin it so that we will be under siege not only from the envious Leaver rats whose own addlepated actions are sinking the ship, but from the petty criminals the rapidly declining society will spawn.
But this isn't a political blog; that would be McBride's Bar & Grill.
It's not a health blog, either.
So what's the title about, then, especially after the anti-fascist rant above?
It's about how we manage to get through it, how we remove the largest loads of crap the world has seen in a century, at least, from invading our sacred space, our artistic soul. Or how, if the walls have been breached, we can manage to shit the poison out, metaphorically speaking.
Shit it out, though, I think we must. Either that, or we'll find ourselves babbling in a corner about how cute Hallmark-style cards with little Kewpie dolls and cutesy saying on them really are. And god forbid, painting one.
So what to do?
ART
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| A relatively calm expression of the attitude that requires colonic cleansing. L. H. McBride, 2019 It is probably fit for the Museum of Bad Art; it was done in abut 4 minutes or less in the old Microsoft Paint program. |
Aside from that, artists make are. Some artists, perhaps realist painters, might fling paint at a canvas to relieve their angst, and call the result abstract expressionism. Others would paint horrific faux-medieval tableaux of devils down the the tiniest detail.
Writers can also turn their skill to tasks they don't ordinarily undertake with a view to relieving stress. Some, who might toil as poets by day, might write a dystopian novel. A journalist might write a play; a playwright might decide on a series of letters to the editor--journalism of sorts--to clear her artistic colon of accumulated bullshit.
I have been thinking for days of doing the paint slinging. But I'm too cheap to waste expensive oils. Watercolour wouldn't bring to the effort the gravitas it demands. The idea of writing a play or even a dystopian novel is daunting; I've got the second Shelf Barker mystery, Pool Full of Death, to complete sometime between now and Christmas; it's humorous, so I don't want to get a tragedian's mindset about it all at the moment.
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| A more distressed Paint effort in the colonic cleansing vein. L.H. McBride, 2019 |
Yes, the very thing: the old Microsoft Paint program. It's simple, vibrant--unless you do a lot of monkeying with the colours with various effects. If you do that, though, it won't be quick and won't get the foul meal of Republican or Tory force-feeding through your gullet and out the nether end, so to speak. So no, just Paint, alone.
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| Really getting the shit shifted now; no pretense at design. L. H. McBride, 2019 |
I did the three Paint works above while I was writing this.
And just now, my efforts opened me up to one I want to do. A cabbage. Just a cabbage. A cabbage somehow reminds me of that grand photo of 45IQ in an old-style clear plastic women's rain hat, the ones that tie under the chin. (Not high art, but high humour to be sure.)
If you're a writer with a colonic issue, I'd suggest you sign up for Comedywire; being forced to write funny one-liners about anything and everything is one way to force the Cheeto/Brexit bullshit out of your system for a while.
I go through Comedywire periods, but it as been a while. Sometimes the crap is so thick, you can't even shift it that far. But I just checked it. Top of page was a BBC report about Pilots Report IFOs off Irish Coast. The first quip I read was, "Where else would little green men be headed?" You don't even have to be PC in your comments. And I'm fairly sure I've used the word Fuck on Comedywire and it got posted.
I became a member of Comedywire months and months ago, maybe years. It might have been when no one with a brain could imagine Cheeto could ever be elected. Maybe that long.
When I joined (one had to send a CV then, don't know about now), the founder let me join but asked me why I wanted to, as he could see that I was basically a journalist, and journalists aren't known for being witty, although I admit we are known for being PC, snarky and at times a bit darkly humorous. He was probably right to be a bit skeptical; there are times when the inundation of political bullshit these days is so deep, I can't even dream of making a funny remark. But if I force myself, it helps.
Or you could try the old standards: drinking and carousing. Both are fun, and might clear the pipes pretty well. But you can't do them instantly; Paint and Comedywire, you can.
Plus, you can always drink and carouse later, when you feel better.
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Copyright 2018, LH McBride
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